Bouncin' Kidz Complaint - Beware of this Unprofessional Company

MICHIGAN -- If you are looking to rent a bounce house or food concession machine in MI, I would recommend staying away from Bouncin' Kidz (www.bouncinkidz.com) I had contacted them by email a week ago to inquire about renting a cotton candy machine for a family party. They responded quite quickly that they had one available on the date I wanted, so I immediately replied back that I indeed wanted to reserve it and to please let me know if any further info was required on my part to hold the machine. I stated if they needed a CC number I would be happy to call them with it to hold the machine. I didn't hear from them for a couple of days and emailed again and tried calling to make sure the reservation was all set. They then said (when I heard from them 6 days later) they needed to double check the reservation book and get back to me. A day later (it had been a week since the original inquiry/reservation by this point), they email me saying sorry the have already rented out their machines for that day. Now, I've called other rental places in the area and none are available on the day I need it. Also, I had passed on a machine from another company that had responded since I thought I had already secured one and bouncin' kidz was much closer to our party. Of course, that one is now no longer available as well. The company appears to be very unprofessional and I would look for other options if you are looking for party rentals in south east MI.

alleys-what I was upset about is they told me they had one for me, gave me the price and asked weather or not I wanted to pick it up or have them deliver it. I gave them all the info back and assumed it was all taken care of. I tried to confirm that the unit was reserved and make sure they didn't want a CC # to hold it (which they never asked for), so I essentially was performing a follow up step because I have heard a number of these party rental places are unreliable.They then did not contact me for 6 days and when I was finally able to get a hold of them again, they said sorry we don't have one for you. If you believe that is acceptable business practice, by all means feel free to do business with them, I was just warning people that is was rather unprofessional in my opinion.

Posted by Sparticus on 2007-07-10:

I'd be mad. Hopefully you have time to find another vendor... Though it looks like you might be out of luck. I suppose as a backup maybe you could buy some bags of cotton candy and balloons or something? The kids will never know the difference... ;-)

Posted by Anonymous on 2007-07-10:

Ally, you're just being rude.

Posted by BouncinKidz on 2007-07-12:

Dear Chemman,

I apologize that our machines were unavailable to you. Our office closed from July 1 thru July 8th for the holiday. There are many employees who handle phone calls and emails and customers that come into our facility. Someone else booked the last unit and there wasn't anything we could do without an immediate credit card deposit. Everything we rent is on a first come, first serve basis. I could offer to pre-make bags for you, but you decided to slam my company for no reason. There is always a delay when you communicate by email and no guarantee that you can or will get an immediate response. The best communication when you need immediate assistance is over the phone. From the looks of your previous postings you do this a lot. Maybe you need to find something more positive to fill your time with.

Regards,

Michelle LaLonde
Bouncin' Kidz

Posted by chemman on 2007-07-13:

I feel I had plenty of reason. I was told it was available and immediately responded that I wanted it and offered to call with a CC number. The email response never mentioned anything about needing a CC card to reserve it, nor did they mention anything about calling being the best way to handle the transaction. I did try calling but never got an answer, nor did you mention that you were closed from July 1st through the 8th. I ended up having to follow up with your company three times before finally getting a response that you had rented it to someone else. I don't feel I slammed your company at all, I just offered my honest opinion, it was not handled professionally. Had your company's original response to my request included the info that you stated in your response here, I would have no complaints because you would have been providing your customers with the proper info on how to handle the transaction, instead of leaving it up to me to figure it out over a period of a week of trying to get a hold of you.

Sorry again if you felt my review was unfair, it was just based on my real experience with your company, hopefully you can use it as a learning experience on how to better handle transactions in the future or maybe just add some info to your site that explains the procedure.